Alliance Blog Reviews

Most people on twitter want to increase the number of people that follow them. I currently only have about 170 followers and so gaining 1,000 new followers may seem a little ambitious. But I am up to the challenge! Here’s my 10 point plan to get 1,000 new followers this year. (This works out to about 85 new followers per month.) 1. Tweet about new blog posts Whenever I post something new on my blog I will also tweet about it. This may sound obvious but it’s worth mentioning. If you have great content you need to make sure that it gets tweeted. 2. Tweet More Often In 2009 I didn’t tweet every day. There were some weeks where I didn’t tweet at all. I need to change this and make 3 tweets every day. If every tweet garners me 1 new follower then tweeting 3 times a day should give me 3 new followers each day or over 1,000 followers by the end of the year. I could tweet more often than 3 times a day but I fear that it will irritate some of my followers. Since I seldom add new stuff to my blog more than once a day I have made a list of old but valuable blog posts. It is from this list I will pull from to tweet about. 3. Develop a schedule and Tweet at the best times I have found that some times of the day are far better for tweeting than others. It seems that 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time are the best times to tweet. I don’t really have any strong empirical evidence and I haven’t run numerous controlled experiments. It’s just what I have observed with my own tweets. So I have developed a schedule to ensure that I tweet about a couple things around 9 AM and again at noon. Hopefully tweeting at the right times will result in more retweets and more followers for me. 4. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about my site If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it. It’s called Tweetcount and is a free download. 5. Invite people to follow me at the end of each post When people finish reading a post on my blog they ask themselves, “What should I do now?” It’s at this point that you should have a link inviting them to follow you on twitter and get more fabulous updates about the topic at hand. 6. Put a link to my twitter account in my e-mail signature I receive e-mails every day from different people asking me how to get traffic to their website. And I respond to everyone of them By putting a link to my twitter profile at the bottom of these e-mail responses I can get more followers. I have no idea why I didn’t do this before. 7. Have a contest with the winners being picked for my twitter followers I’m not sure exactly how I plan to do this but I hope to have it figured out in a few weeks. The first thing is to find a prize that people actually care about. It has to be something that they would be willing to follow me for the chance to win. I run a blog about how to get traffic to your website (My blog is called Nick’s Traffic Tricks) and I tweet about things related to traffic generation. So I want to gain followers that are interested in this topic. As a result I want to select a prize that will attract these kind of people. If I simply give away an iPod I will probably get lots of followers and most will not be interested in what I tweet about. The results will be that I will gain lots of followers in the short run but most of them will eventually drop off. So the prize I select has to be something that entices the type of followers that I want. (If you have any suggestions on how to successfully run a contest on twitter please leave a comment below!) 8. Write for TwiTip I wrote a guest post for TwiTip a month or so ago. That was probably the single best thing I ever did to get more followers on twitter. Within a few days I had 40 new followers. I’m going to try to write for TwiTip twice a month. This should result in 80 new followers each month. 9. Leverage my email list I have an e-mail list of over 1,000 people that receive my traffic tips on regular basis. And I plan to leverage this list to get more followers on twitter. I will add link to my twitter account at the bottom of each e-mail that I send to my list. I just need to think of a way to really entice them to click the link and follow me. I will also e-mail my list every time I post something new on my blog. At the bottom of each blog post is an invitation to follow me on twitter and that will result in a few more followers. 10. Submit each new blog post to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire Submitting your website to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire will result in more traffic to your website. And more traffic means more people are reading your blog posts and seeing your invitation to follow you on twitter. I’ve personally seen a viral effect with StumbleUpon that increased my twitter following. A couple months ago I posted a fantastic way to get backlinks to your website quickly with little effort. (This was something that my readers loved!) Without my knowing, many of my readers stumbled the post sending a ton of traffic to my blog. A side effect of this was that there was a jump in the number of people following me on twitter. If you do nothing else make sure you stumble your content. I believe this is so important that I will actually stumble your content as well. Just go to: http://nickstraffictricks.com/can-i-stumble-your-site/ © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How I Will Add 1,000 Twitter Followers This Year

See the original post:
How I Will Add 1,000 Twitter Followers This Year

Mark Zuckerberg and I aren’t Facebook friends. That’s cool; I don’t know him. Until recently, all I could see of his profile was his picture, networks and friend list. But this morning, either the Facebook CEO had decided that’s what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or even he didn’t know what the new privacy settings changed. I’m going to guess that it was B, because since the articles on True Slant and ValleyWag have run, Zuckerberg’s profile is a lot more private. On his Page (where you can be his fan, not to be confused with his profile), Zuckerberg defends the change: For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn’t see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear Oh, really? Because when I try to visit his profile, I get a “Mark only shares some of his profile information with everyone.” message at the top of his profile, and no photos. Zuckerberg does still share some of his info with everyone: his basic info, personal info (only the about me: “i’m trying to make the world a more open place.”), education and work, and five of the pages he’s a fan of. (These five rotate; screen caps from the privacy changes indicate he has 17 pages.) Also public: his links, friends and events. There is, of course, another possibility as to why some people like Kashmir Hill can see his photos—they have mutual friends (Hill’s is another Facebook employee). When you update your privacy settings, the new default setting for photos is to make them visible to “Friends of Friends.” (I’ve contacted Ryan Tate to see if he also has at least one mutual friend, but haven’t heard back yet. Mark and I share no friends.) But really, as Facebook is pushing more people to go public, and if Zuckerberg is really “trying to make the world a more open place,” he could do a lot more opening himself. The CEO of the site might be seen as an example to users—and if he really wants them to go public, should he be willing to do the same? What do you think? Was this an accident on Zuckerberg’s part, or because Tate and Hill have mutual friends?

Read the original post:
Even Mark Zuckerberg Isn’t Sure About Getting More Public

It’s been a long time doming, but now it’s officially, truly, official: AOL is part of Time Warner no more. (Technically, actually, AOL bought Time Warner—isn’t that weird?—and now they’re the ones being spun off.) And with its newly-single status, AOL is eyeing every woman in the room—especially old flame Yahoo. They were flirting (or at least rumors have been flying) heavily last year , with reports resurfacing periodically . But now the love has turned to rivalry, with AOL and Yahoo both focusing on their Internet display advertising businesses . AOL is also looking to take on other Internet behemoths like Citysearch, Yelp and Google in a local effort : The initiative — which he characterized as “digitizing towns” — will grow to 100 municipalities in 2010, [AOL CEO and ex-Googler Tim] Armstrong said. Providing a turn-key platform where schools, government departments, local businesses, and classified listings firms can create or update Web sites will be at the heart of the effort. AOL is also focusing on an API-intensive ad platform to allow users to interface directly with their data. That’s cool. But the heart of their plan is their content. AOL will be heavily focusing its advertising sales upon its own properties, where 80% of the content is original. Yahoo, by contrast, has about 20% original content. What do you think? Can AOL be turned around, or is it too late?

Read more:
AOL vs Yahoo–Again

Can you tell the difference between these two ads? Look closely: Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich! OK, that’s not quite the same example that Google just gave over at the official blog, but it did announce that it plans to acquire Teracent . What does Teracent do? Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads. This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content. Think of it as multi-variate testing for your banner ads. No news yet on the price paid and the deal is subject to final closing conditions.

See the rest here:
Smart Move! Google Acquiring “Intelligent Display Advertising” Company Teracent

The ability to retweet on Twitter was already available and has been mostly of use to those in business situations who could take advantage of their followers retweeting their promotions. This has been drastically changed with the retweet feature now being in a simple to use button under any of your feeds tweets. You may ask yourself why you would bother retweeting more often just because of a button, and you are right to do so. After all you are just making the ones you follow more exposed to the tweeters who follow you. However this works both ways. Your tweets can also be retweeted by your followers. The new feature doesn’t just place a simple RT in front of the retweeted tweet on your profile. By being retweeted your profile picture and username appears next to your own tweet, on someone else’s page! For example today I retweeted @johncmayer and his photo and link appeared on my profile. For him this means that now all of my followers (who otherwise may not have seen his tweet) have been exposed to his content and may choose to follow him and/or retweet it again creating a ripple effect and sending his message to an entirely new audience. By being promoted by other twitter users one could potentially gain thousands of new followers. Which we all know translates to twinfluence. For social users who hover around 100-200 followers this provides an avenue for increased twitter success. It should be noted however that without interesting tweets you are unlikely to be retweeted in this new fashion so although the features are useful, tweet-quality is still king in what determines your networking success. The new feature also gives even more power to those with staggering amounts of followers already. For example @aplusk who is almost at 4 million followers could choose to retweet a message and give that person’s content access to the gargantuan amount of followers he has. For tweeters who promote their own blog or product this could be the best free advertising campaign that they ever get. Even television commercials won’t receive upwards of 3.5 million views in a matter of seconds. The sidebar on twitter now includes a section appropriately titled ‘retweets’. Within this selection there are 3 mini-sections. The 1st of which is ‘Retweets by others’ which shows what the people you follow have been retweeting. This again will give added exposure to those lucky enough to be retweeted by someone like @biz. The 2nd section is ‘Retweets by you’ which is as simple as it sounds; it lists all the tweets that you have retweeted and gives you the option to untweet those messages. The 3rd and most important section for you is the ‘Your tweets retweeted’ section. This section allows you to follow which of your tweets have been retweeted and by whom. This allows you to track your tweets and observe the spread of your content and username which is ultimately the thing that will make this feature useful to you. All of these sections also show who else has retweeted what you have. For them it means they are being exposed to others who have similar interests and for you it means that you are also being exposed to others with similar interests, others who could potentially become your newest followers. As you can see the retweet feature will change how we network and how we make connections with others on twitter. The button doesn’t guarantee twitter success but it does make it easier for those with interesting things to say. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How The New Retweet Feature Changes Marketing On Twitter

Here is the original post:
How The New Retweet Feature Changes Marketing On Twitter

( via ) So, ever since I came back from Vegas, I have had a pretty bad head cold. But, I have been diligently applying my favorite remedy: Watching mindless YouTube videos! Seriously, it makes me feel better. I am not sure why, but I am sticking to it! One thing I have noticed is that the most popular videos have at least one of two things; authentic, original content, or very well polished and produced material. Basically, if the video has authentic, original content then it doesn’t really matter if it’s “put together” well, because the content alone will sell it. However, if you are trying to replicate something someone has already done, then you need to do it better than them, make sure that your presentation is polished and your delivery is spot on. Which brings us to the video above. Here we see employees at a Microsoft store dancing to Chris Brown’s “Forever”. This is an obvious attempt to ride on the popular Wedding Entrance meme that started this summer. Unfortunately, the content of this video isn’t authentic or original and it was put together pretty poorly. I mean, take a look at those buffoons! Their own customers are trying hard to ignore how awkward they look. This is the type of video I would normally find at failblog . So instead of creating a viral video that helps promote their brand, the only attention they get is snarky bloggers (like me) making fun of them! This same lesson can be applied outside of viral video. Take for example MySpace and Facebook. For a long time MySpace was the only mainstream social network. Because they had an original concept they didn’t have to worry about having a polished interface and enforcing tight security standards, and they didn’t. As a result, Facebook gained massive popularity over MySpace because they offered everything MySpace did plus a clean interface and a barrage of privacy options. So, to sum things up: When developing a product or a new idea ask your self, is this original? If the answer is no, then spend as much time on presentation and working out the kinks as possible.

Read the rest here:
Cup of Joe: How Not To Go Viral and Look Like an Idiot

Most of us have blogs, right? How do you react to anonymous vulgar comments? Hit SPAM, right? Yeah, me too. And so did the Director of Social Media for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Kurt Greenbaum. The first time. But when the anonymous commenter again posted the single-word vulgarity, Greenbaum tracked his IP address—to a school. Probably thinking he was reporting a misbehaving student, Greenbaum contacted the school and explained the situation. Six hours later, the school called back: they’d found the commenter—an employee. After they confronted him, the employee resigned. Most of us probably have an intrinsic notion that the anonymous commenter and Greenbaum both acted inappropriately (although there was no way for Greenbaum to know he was turning in an employee and not a student)—but perhaps the more important question is whether they were acting legally. Greenbaum, a Post-Dispatch employee, should be bound by the paper’s online privacy policy, which states: We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. However, at the beginning of the policy, they stipulate that “Your IP address does not contain personally identifiable information, nor does it identify you personally.” So is that individual user information? Sounds like it’s not. And the Post-Dispatch’s ToS is an exercise in CYA (they define “submission” to include comments): You automatically waive any claim that any use of such content violates any of your rights, including privacy rights, publicity rights, moral rights or any other right, including the right to approve the way we use such content. You are responsible for the content of all Submissions and acknowledge that third parties may hold you responsible for content related claims including libel, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of likeness and disclosure of confidential information. You shall indemnify, defend and hold us, our parent company and our affiliated entities (including our officers, directors, owners, agents and employees) harmless from all liability and costs incurred by those indemnified in connection with any claim arising out of any breach by you of the above representations and warranties and for any claims related to the content or your Submissions. And, naturally, the ToS stipulates that using the site to “upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available content that is harmful to minors in any way, or that is harassing, harmful, threatening, abusive, vulgar, obscene, defamatory, libelous, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable” violates the ToS, too. And how were Anon’s actions illegal? Well, setting aside possible obscenity charges (while legally problematic, “obscenity” is not protected under the First Amendment), the school probably also has policies—policies that dictate the use of school resources. Most likely, this comment was made on school time, from a school computer, using the school’s Internet connection. Somehow, I can’t imagine there’s a provision in the policy that allows for use of school resources for posting vulgar comments online. By violating these policies, the employee could face discipline or even termination. What do you think? Would these policies hold up in court?

Continued here:
The Price of One Anonymous Comment? Your Job